Nasdaq-Kraken Partnership Aims to Tokenize Stocks on Blockchain

Nasdaq's partnership with Kraken to launch tokenized equities by H1 2027 marks a significant institutional leap into blockchain-powered finance. The collaboration leverages Kraken's established xStocks framework, which has already processed over $20 billion in cumulative trading volume and boasts over 85,000 unique holders.

The partnership aims to modernize and streamline financial processes, including corporate actions, shareholder engagement, and proxy voting, by recording asset ownership on a blockchain. This will offer enhanced transparency, efficiency, and potentially 24/7 trading capabilities.

The market for tokenized Real-World Assets (RWAs) is projected to surge to $9.43 trillion by 2030, driven by institutional participation, fractional ownership, and the integration of decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms. The partnership's focus on regulatory equivalence and compliance addresses a key hurdle in the adoption of tokenized equities.

The xStocks framework will serve as the permissionless infrastructure layer enabling tokenized stocks to interact with open blockchain networks while maintaining alignment with securities trading on Nasdaq's markets.